The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
Future precipitation may be forecasted based on various measurements, including actual rainfall measurements collected in the past. Rainfall is usually measured using rain gauges that gather and measure the amounts of precipitation accumulated in the gauge over a period of time. Unfortunately, rain gauges have many limitations. For example, a rain gauge usually indicates the amount of rainfall in a localized area, and thus collecting rainfall measurements from a large region may require installing and maintaining a large quantity of gauges. Furthermore, a rain gauge may provide inaccurate readings in high-wind weather conditions and in cold weather conditions. During these conditions, rain droplets may freeze around a funnel of the gauge and fail to pass through to the gauge measuring compartment, causing errors in the gauge's readings.
Due to the shortcomings of rain gauges, meteorologists have turned into other tools. For example, they have been using various radars configured to measure atmospheric conditions that occurred in the past and present, and applying the collected information to make educated guesses about the upcoming weather.